Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Will the New Apple Car Have Windows?

Social Fresh

Down in sunny Tampa, FL, Social Fresh 2015 kicked off on Wednesday. This event is run by Jason Keath and his social media education company (under the same name), producing conferences for industry leaders from around the world (so much to learn, always a blast!).

Over the past few days, Social Fresh has generated THOUSANDS of mentions across the board:

Other highlights?

On Wednesday, Savannah Peterson, Director of Innovation Strategy at speckdesign, led the share of voice among Social Fresh speakers, just edging out Nick Cicero (Founder/CEO of Delmondo) and Chris Moody (Director, content + social at Oracle Marketing Cloud):

Congrats, Ricky! And a special shout-out to our second place winner, Matt Hannaford (February 2009) – we have a special surprise headed your way!

Apple Car

The maker of “iProducts” has quietly announced a project under the code name “Titan,” and many are speculating this could result in the first-ever Apple Car. According to the Wall Street Journal, the initiative is requiring three times the number of engineers that it normally would, and has a ship date of 2019. With everything being kept under wraps on Apple’s end, the public has been left to make it’s own guesses as to what is going to come of this project – and the conversation certainly hasn’t fallen short!

Top mentions pulled in here at Zignal Labs indicate people are primarily wondering what the car will look like and what it will be called:

And of all the questions being asked, this one is coming up the most (for good reason):

So Apple is planning on releasing their new “iCar” my only question is, will it have Windows? — Gregg (@GreggOchs) September 24, 2015

The Pope’s U.S. Takeover

Pope Francis arrived stateside on Tuesday afternoon, initiating a six-day visit across several U.S. cities. Throughout his visit, the pope has illustrated empathy for the poor, while discussing some of the country’s largest political, social and economic issues.

Upon the pontiff’s arrival in Washington D.C., President Obama, First Lady Obama, and Vice President Biden were each there to greet him as he arrived from Cuba. Here is a realtime word cloud capturing mentions as soon as the pope touched down:

Notice that climate change is carrying 23% of the conversation, followed closely by immigration and security – in turn, we can see that several domestic US issues are also concerns on a global level. It will be interesting to watch how this may affect the positions held by US politicians and the conversations around the current pool of US Presidential contenders.

Volkswagen Emission Scandal

Last Friday, news broke of Volkswagen purposely programming over 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles to emit lower levels of harmful gases in official tests than on the roads. We captured automotive industry buzz over the last week, and as you can see, VW is at the center of it:

By Wednesday morning, it was safe to say the company was in trouble. Volkswagen’s chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, announced his resignation around 8AM PT, and mentions of the CEO spiked once the story began to spread.

It is also interesting to note that by the end of the week, all trending automotive stories pulled in by Zignal Labs featured “Volkswagen” or “VW” in the headline: